FVM Hiawatha Baggage Express Car

[Pennsy]

I got my FVM Hiawatha Baggage Express car earlier this week from BLW. Another great car from FVM. I'm not a Milwaukee Road modeler and don't have any prototype info but I think the Hiawatha train was a beauty. The painting is gorgeous and the lettering is remarkable fine. The separate details on these cars are great and the baggage car even has a break chain on the B end.

I do have two remarks/questions about my particular car. First mine appears to have had a Tape-Cafe under body applied. Drawings of the baggage car indicate no AC unit and my car definitely has the same underbody equipment as the Tape-Cafe. Looks easily removable but does anyone know if the water tank should be on the baggage car too?
Second mine car was obviously packed a little roughly. Both axles in one truck were sprung, and two of the lower hand grabs where broken off. I've got one but will need to get another replacement.

This car will look great with the rest of my Hiawatha..

Jim Donaldson
SP4 U.S. Army Cavalry Scout

[skytop35]

You can remove the water tank.   About the only equipment on the underbody should be the large toolbox/battery box (not sure what it is) that is dead center on one side and the brake gear.

[Frisco Larry]

Agree with your observations.  I can not find any good photos, but the drawing originally posted by FVM shows only the three steam traps and the battery box.  I would assume that the brake gear opposite the battery box would be unchanged.  The car is classified as a baggage storage car, thus it would not probably have a water tank.  Hopefully someone else has more definite info.

[skytop35]

My info came from The Milwaukee Shops book "HIAWATHA First of the Speedliners" It has drawings and plenty of photos. No water tank anywhere that I see.

Here's one of my cars. Note that I painted my trucks silver as I model the mid 1960's.

[peteski]

That's funny Bill, from this angle it seems that the car is sitting to high on its trucks (I noted the same on the original Hiawatha set I won but someone on the Atlas forum convinced me that this was prototypical).  It just looks like there is too much daylight between the top of the truck and the bottom of that car.  But if it is prototypical, so be it.

[nkalanaga]

Judging from the few pictures I can find, not being a MILW passenger modeler, it seems that the early Hiawatha cars had unusually high side sills.  The floor height matched other roads' cars, but the sides didn't extend as far below the floor.  Later MILW cars, especially those purchased from outside builders, have noticeably lower sides when coupled to the early cars.

[Chris333]

[peteski]

Ah, now I remember!  The model's center beam ends before the coupler pocket (to allow the coupler to swing), That is why daylight shows there. Also, IIRC there is a cutout in the center beam to clear the flanges of the inner wheel sets. Again, that is why the daylight shows there. All is well (as much as it can be).   

[bbussey]

The centersill always can be added over the trucks to remove the daylight.  Of course, this would limit the radii that the model could traverse.  Since it's underneath the cars and painted a dark color ... Evergreen styrene strip used on-edge should visually solve the problem without affecting minimum radii.  A strip of .015" or .020" with a width to match the height of the centerbeam and painted to match should suffice.

[nkalanaga]

I've used that idea to fill gaps on freight cars, usually after body mounting couplers, and it really is as simple as Bryan says.  One package of strips will do a LOT of cars, so it also isn't expensive, and if you can't perfectly match the underframe color, the mismatch won't show when it's on the track.

[peteski]

Simple yet good ideas - thanks!

[peteski]

I just received mine (in the orange/maroon/gray Hiawatha colors) and the thing which immediately struck me (in a positive way) is that the trucks were painted with a nice flat opaque coat of maroon paint!   I suspect that in this run all the cars will have painted trucks.  That looks *SO* much better than the bare semi-translucent unpainted plastic trucks used in the original run!  That was one of the few complaints I had about otherwise superbly executed model.

I guess that is what I get for being an early adopter.  I reserved the original Hiawatha set when first announced: about a year before it was delivered. I suspect that my money went into improvements like this.  How knows, maybe my critique of the unpainted plasticky-looking trucks actually made a difference (I emailed the review of that set I posted on Atlas forum to Matt G. at FVM).  If you're interested, read through http://forum.atlasrr.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=65324

I wonder if Matt lurks around this forum. I sure could use a set of those painted trucks for my original Hiawatha....

[Bob Bufkin]

Been meaning to ask.  Would this car show up on a PRR mail/express train?